


ein stummer schrei nach liebe

by AuroraKant



Series: January Prompts [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Author Thought Too Hard About The Realities Of A Wired Shut Jaw, Body Horror, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson Whump, Dick... I Am So Sorry, Force-Feeding, Gen, Hurt Dick Grayson, Introspection, It's Not Sad Or Bad... Just... Open, Mouth Sewn Shut, Panic Attacks, Trauma, feeding tube, jaw wired shut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:34:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28486164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraKant/pseuds/AuroraKant
Summary: Dick Grayson had only offered Jason to pose as the Red Hood because he wanted to help his little brother out - caught in the clutches of a drug trafficking ring, who likes to punish mouthy vigilantes by wiring their jaw shut--- Dick would rather be anywhere else but here.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Dick Grayson & OC Villain
Series: January Prompts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086611
Comments: 38
Kudos: 139
Collections: Bat Family 18+ Discord Server January Prompt Event





	ein stummer schrei nach liebe

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!   
> There are quite a few things for this note:  
> 1\. the title is a German song title that roughly translates to "A Silent Scream For Love"  
> 2\. I must thank Aki for the prompt, Gem for the initial plot idea, Shell and CK for further plot ideas, Aki for reading over it when I had a crisis... and that's it---- this is not like any of the plots we all talked to so much about besides the initial idea, that Dick was posing as the Red Hood! Another smek for that wonderful idea Gem! <3  
> 3\. If its too much - the back button exists, and your safety is more important than my fic!
> 
> AND NOW ENJOY (this is the Day 1: Undercover Prompt btw)

Dick loved the leather jacket even if the weather was too hot to wear. Not even the late hour could protect him from the stifling air, sweat running down his back. But at least he looked cool.

He hated the helmet, however – his hair was sticking to his forehead with sweat, and Dick had no idea how Jason resisted the urge to scratch himself bloody with that damned thing on his head.

And yet there was not much Dick could do about it.

Jason was holed up in one of his safehouses, his leg fractured in three places. The Red Hood would go nowhere for quite some time – but crime didn’t stop just because one of them had hurt himself. Instead, just two nights after Jason had suffered said injury, crime in the Bowery had skyrocketed.

Dick was the only one who could believably pass for Jason – Bruce could as well, but there were things that were unlikely and then there were things that were simply _impossible_ … a Batman with guns was the later. Dick on the other hand never had the same hatred for guns that Bruce embodied, even if he felt a whole lot more comfortable knowing that the guns currently strapped to his thighs were filled with rubber bullets.

Dick knew how to fire a gun – didn’t mean he liked it. Or enjoyed it as much as Jason sometimes did.

It was summer, which meant crime in Blüdhaven was down. That was probably the second reason why Dick had agreed to Jason’s insane request. The first reason being the drug dealers Dick was currently tracking down.

Because Jason hadn’t just fractured his own leg during a normal night out patrolling, no, his brother had been in the middle of a major drug trafficking case. And now Dick needed to finish the mission for him, before any trace of the dealers had vanished from Gotham and then reappeared in a city no Bat had power over.

Dick could understand why Jason had put so much energy into catching them – they mostly dealt to kids, their main territory directly overlapping with Jason’s, and the drugs they dealt were dirty with a high mortality rate.

They were scum.

Especially since they never stayed in a city long enough to be caught the normal, legal way. No, it would have to be a vigilante who tracked them down and jailed them.

Dick jumped over the gap between two buildings, the street beneath him dirty and empty. He didn’t flip, or roll… it was a straightforward jump, and he was once again reminded of another reason why patrolling as someone else sucked: the Nightwing flair was missing.

It didn’t take long before Dick reached the street corner the deal would take place at. Jason had given him the details with minimal complaints, and Dick was grateful for it. The only thing that would make this even more annoying would be the added work of solving the case on his own.

Dick had enough open cases of his own – he didn’t need to put the legwork into Jason’s as well.

He found a chimney he could hide behind, the streets below him deserted as off now. It was a stakeout – which meant it was time to wait.

For a long while nothing happened, the muscles in Dick’s leg complaining about their continuous uncomfortable position, the Bowery empty this late into the night. When the dealers came, Dick almost didn’t notice them, their voices so silent, he had to lean forward to really understand them:

“The shipment comes on the twelfth. I want as many of your guys there as possible. And try to sell more of your stuff. The way your rates are dropping the boss might drop _you_.”

“Don’t you order me around… Middle School starts up again next week and then you can watch as my numbers climb up, up, up.”

Silently Dick shifted into a position that would allow him to jump forward. This was important information – it just sucked that Red Hood still denied Oracle access to his helmets, or Dick could have forwarded the information immediately. As it was, Dick would have to remember the details on his own – no problem there – before he jumped the men talking.

The dealers seemed like people who wanted to spill some secrets. Especially if Dick’s fists and Jason’s guns encouraged them to talk.

Slowly, as not to accidentally make a sound, Dick unlocked one of the holsters on his thigh, pulling the gun out of its leather sheath. His entire focus was directed at the street in front of him, his peripheral hindered by the giant red thing covering his head.

Maybe that was why he didn’t hear the silent cursing behind him. Maybe that was why he only turned around, when the roof behind him creaked.

By that time, it was already too late.

A shadowed figure stood in front of him, and before Dick could kick, or fire, or even quip, they fired a weapon of their own. Dick couldn’t see what kind of gun it was – but he felt the blow dart pierce the skin on his neck.

It all went downhill rather quickly after that, the world blurring, and swimming, and falling apart. Dick was fumbling for the emergency beacon even the Red Hood carried with him, but he couldn’t be sure of his success. His fingers were too numb to tell. His head to heavy to really care.

He stumbled, and it was the shadowy figure who caught him.

The world turned black and the only thing Dick could think, was that this case had gone to hell.

Aw, shit.

Waking up was a daring endeavor, time flowing like thick molasses past his fingers.

His head had been stuffed with wool, and his stomach was tight, his knees tingling… all sure signs that Dick had been drugged. Now he only needed to figure out why. Now he only needed to pry his eyes open and take stock of his surroundings.

Dick struggled to open his eyes, but the moment he succeeded in blinking the stars in his eyes away, he wanted to simply roll over and go back to sleep. But he couldn’t.

He was in a warehouse. It was always a warehouse.

But that wasn’t the problem.

Warehouses were routine, and that usually meant the cavalry would show up in a couple of minutes and any trouble would get taken care off. As it was… Dick wasn’t wearing the Nightwing suit. No, he could feel the familiar body armor Jason favored pressing down on him.

The helmet was gone, but there was still something covering his eyes.

His secret identity was safe – but the rest of him probably wasn’t.

He was laying on a slap of metal, his arms, legs and torso restrained with thick leather bands. Dick tested them – but either they were too strong, or Dick was still too weak from the drugs cursing through his system.

They didn’t budge.

It was hard to assess the situation further, since Dick’s head was also restrained, a band covering his forehead and making it impossible to look around. He couldn’t see how many men were in the warehouse with him, and he couldn’t tell what kind of danger would soon befall him.

He just knew that something bad was going to happen.

Situations like these always meant that something bad was about to go down – and since Dick was the Red Hood right now and not Nightwing, it was probably about to go down even worse.

(because Nightwing had back-up – the Red Hood had his guns)

The fuzziness inside his head subsided and the background noise of the warehouse slowly started to make sense. There was a lot yelling, the words indiscernible, with an undercurrent of clanking metal. The goons were anxious, Dick could sense that much, even if he was unable to look at the postures of the people who caught him. It was hard to tell what a person was thinking, if you couldn’t see their body language to back your assumptions up.

And then… a door was being opened and silence fell over the room.

The big bad boss was here, even if Dick had no idea who that was.

Anxiety was bubbling in his stomach. The sound of heavy steps echoed through the warehouse. It felt like a cheap movie, the tension being artificially being built with the help of creepy sound design. But then again… it was too silent for that. The goons were afraid of whoever had just entered. _Deadly afraid_.

Maybe Dick should be too.

The man appeared in Dick’s field of vision… and Dick had no idea who it was. It certainly wasn’t one of Gotham’s typical crazies, which made sense, since the operation Dick had been following was from all over the world. Well, Jason had been following them – Dick was just the hero enacting justice.

(the hero _attempting_ to enact justice)

The guy was tall, his hair silver, the face unmasked.

A shiver ran down Dick’s spine. It was always a bad sign if the evil dude let you see his face the first time you met. Because it usually meant, they were pretty sure they had you. They were wrong ninety-nine percent of the time, but that didn’t make the torture hurt any less.

“Hello, Red Hood. It is good to see you again.”

Ah, Dick had almost forgotten that he was still wearing Jason’s uniform. _Damn_. He would get tortured for something he hadn’t even done – this time it wasn’t Nightwing who had pissed of a bunch of evil psychopaths. It was Jason. Dick had the vague feeling that that might make this even worse. Dick had his own villains and enemies – but Jason had a special talent for making people mad in a way that surpassed rhyme or reason.

“Well, I would say the same to you – but we both know I would be lying.”

Luckily, Jason was just as quippy as Dick tended to be, which meant he didn’t have to bite his tongue. It was a small blessing, but Dick would take what he could get. It was a welcome distraction of the caged in feeling that crept up his arm and legs, the restrains making his heart beat faster.

Dick really, really hated being tied down.

“Ah, your mouth is still working just fine, I see. Maybe I will have to take care of that… What were your exact words when you blew up my shipment full of the finest goods? ‘Alexandre Dumas, Eat Your Heart Out’?”

Yeah, that sounded like something Jason would yell while a building exploded behind him.

“What can I say? I’m pretty charming.”

The evil guy scowled, and Dick suddenly realized that these people really thought they had the Red Hood… they were outsiders, they didn’t know the intricacies of Gotham vigilantes. They didn’t know that sometimes the Red Hood lost a lot of bulk and made funnier quips.

_Shit._

Dick was not in the mood to get tortured. Especially not tied down, with no way to defend himself.

“You are a nuisance, that’s what you are.”

It wasn’t the first time Dick had been called that, and it probably wouldn’t be the last – Dick was more surprised by the mild-mannered tone the evil guy was using. Ah, so it was one of the calm and collected ones. They tended to be the worst.

They tended to be the really fucked up assholes.

“Well, it takes one to know one, right?”

The hit came out of nowhere, and the leather restrains prevented Dick from lessening the force of the blow. It hurt, his entire cheek smarting from the surprisingly hard hit. The evil guy’s face hadn’t changed at all. Still calm, still serene. There wasn’t even a hit of anger on his face.

_Fuck._

Yeah, this wouldn’t be fun. This would be the exact opposite.

“Your mouth is such a pain, Red Hood. You could be a good man, otherwise… but with a mouth like that? All it makes you is a bitch.”

Dick honest to god growled as the man stepped closer. Nausea was building in his stomach – something was going very wrong right now, and nothing Dick did was helping his situation any. He tried to move, but his arms and legs were pinned.

He couldn’t even kick the asshole, for fucks sake!

“What are you? An even more misogynistic Dr. Frankenstein?”

Blood was coating his teeth as he grinned, the blow the bastard had dealt him splitting his lip. Yeah, Dick was posturing – he was annoying the asshole on purpose. Why? Maybe Dick was hoping to win some more time, maybe he was simply desperate.

Or maybe Dick just never learned how to fucking shut his mouth.

Judging by the dangerous glimmer in Sick Bastard’s face, Dick really wished he would have learned that lesson at least once.

The asshole’s voice didn’t waver when he answered Dick:

“As a matter of fact… I am a Doctor. A medical one. And I must say… your voice is grating on my nerves. It has done so, since the first time my men showed me a video of you blasting your way into one of my operations. It is high time I take care of that.”

Oh wow. So, it wasn’t just some evil bastard… it was a _DR_. Evil Bastard. Dick really hated his life. He shouldn’t have taken Jason’s case… He _did_ have a bad feeling about it! Why didn’t he listen to himself?

Because Jason had been the one who called him. Jason, who never called. Jason, who never asked for help. Jason, who couldn’t look at Dick half the time.

Of course, Dick had said yes. He was predictable like that.

_Fuck_.

“I will skin you alive and hang your dead body from the highest building in Gotham.” spit Dick.

Normally, Dick kept these insults hidden, never making threats as violent or gory as these. But that didn’t mean, he didn’t think them – with a life like his, violence worked on different scales. And as the Red Hood?

It was a threat that could very well come true.

But Dr. Evil only chuckled, like the sick fuck he was:

“I should start with the procedure then? Mike and Jonny… bring me my equipment – and keep it sterile. We don’t want dear Red Hood here to catch an infection after all.”

Dick threw himself against the retrains, the leather digging into his arms and legs, but they wouldn’t budge. His body didn’t even move an inch, no matter how loudly Dick cursed, no matter how strongly he tried to fight.

He couldn’t even really flinch when cool, gloved fingers ghosted over his face, until they had found his mouth.

“Hrmpf.”

The sound escaped Dick against his will, as foreign hands pushed his jaw open. A bright light was being placed above his hard, and Dick tried to blink through the harsh illumination, but he could only vaguely make out the silhouette of fucking Dr. Evil.

One of the hands holding his jaw slipped, and Dick took his chance: He bit down hard on the fingers prodding his tongue, ignoring the yell of pain. Instead, he clamped down even harder, until he could feel skin break, and latex rip… blood filled his mouth, and Dick was proud with the knowledge that it wasn’t his own.

It was almost worth the blow to his head.

Stars exploded behind his eyes, and by the time Dick got his bearings back, no one was touching him anymore. Finally. Thank God. Dick knew it wouldn’t stay that way.

Dr. Evil had finally lost his serene expression, something outright dangerous pulling the corners of his mouth down. Dick would pay for his aggression – but Dick couldn’t find it in himself to regret it.

“You just made a mistake, my dear Red Hood. I was willing to offer you a sedative, to make the pain easier to bear… but it seems as if we are doing this the hard way.”

“Fuck you.”

“Caleb? Secure his head. Johnathan… to my right. Make sure he doesn’t bite.”

Dr. Evil didn’t even answer Dick, instead, he just ordered his men around, until Dick’s head was once again held by foreign and unwelcome hands. He tried to shake it, or to bite down again, but the goons holding him made it impossible.

Grunts of frustration escaped him. This was bad. Really bad. If Dick stopped struggling, he would have to accept that this was happening… that Dr. Evil’s shadow was once again falling over him… that he could taste latex and blood in his mouth and something horrible was going to be done to him… that he could do nothing to prevent it from happening.

It was hard to see what exactly Dr. Evil held in his hands, the tears in Dick’s eyes destroying his last chance to see anything with any amount of clarity. But Dick didn’t need to see his torture instrument, to feel fingers push his lips back, a mouthguard being forcefully pressed into his mouth.

His teeth were clenched, but his lips were no longer covering them. No one was forcing his jaw open, however, no, one of the men holding him was keeping it closed.

_Fuck_.

Dick had the vague feeling he knew what was about to happen.

“Now… you have rather pretty teeth, even if the dental work is extensive. Four plates? At your age? The Bat must really work you hard.”

Dick wanted to bristle, but it was rather ineffective, with three people keeping his head in place. His fists were clenched, his short fingernails pressing down on the callus covering his palm. If he pressed down any harder, he would draw blood.

He couldn’t say anything, all sounds that escaped him small compared to the bright light and the loud voices of the bastards surrounding him.

Maybe it would be more bearable if fucking Dr. Evil would stop talking, but as it was… Dick was forced to listen as his torturer explained just what he was about to do:

“See…. I always liked the idea of a wired shut jaw. Just… making people silent. Not killing them… just making them listen. I was rather disappointed when I found out what ‘wired shut’ actually means in medical terms. It’s so boring. Just a bit of wire connecting your teeth to each other like a _brace_ to help a broken jaw heal… I’m not going to do that.”

Dr. Evil was leaning over Dick, filling his entire field of vision. The bastard was waiting, and after a couple of seconds Dick realized for what. The bastard was waiting for Dick to blink the stars from his vision.

The sight in front of him got less blurry, and Dick really wished he could continue to be oblivious.

Everything would be better than this.

Dr. Evil was holding a needle and a thread. Only the needle was uncomfortably big, and the thread glinted metallic in the light that managed to filter past the bastard’s big head.

“What I am going to do instead, is literally sewing your jaw shut. Tightly… no wiggle room or anything like that. How will I ensure that, you ask? Well… With a bone drill helping me create the perfect holes in your jaw for my thread to pass through. And after that… I will sew your mouth shut as well, but that is for purely aesthetic reasons, I concede.”

Sick bastard.

Sick fucking bastard motherfucker.

Dick was struggling, but no one seemed to even notice his distress. It was… horrible, terrible… _HORRIFIYNG_. Dick wanted to cry – maybe he was? Shivers were running down his spine, and his skin burned where these bastards dared to touch him.

He wanted to fight.

He was Nightwing – he was good at fighting. One of the best.

But he couldn’t do more than clench his fists, even as the people above him moved, readying his demise and disfiguration.

No.

This couldn’t be happening.

No.

_Nonononono_ \---

He barely heard Dr. Evil’s voice, the sound of blood rushing through his ears was deafening:

“You won’t be able to eat after our little procedure… but don’t worry, we will outfit you with a nasogastric tube before we move town.”

To his right Dick could hear the sound of a drill starting up, to his left the pressure on his jaw increased. Dick forced a silent scream past his clenched teeth, but once again – nobody was listening.

“Calm down… the pain will be over soon enough – and after this is over, you better remember that it is a bad idea to cross me or my operation.”

The piercing scream of the medical drill reverberated in Dick’s skull, and the pain was unbelievable when the mental connected with the flesh of Dick’s gum. Dick screamed – or at least he thought he did. He couldn’t tell.

Agony was radiating from his mouth through his entire body, the skin on his palms breaking under the force of Dick’s pain. It was… Dick had never felt anything like this before.

It was a blessing when he passed out.

Everything was better than the glaring light of the medical lamp, and the smiling face of that evil psychopath.

Even darkness – maybe especially darkness.

Dick woke up in a moving van, the world blurry and unfocused around him.

He tried to ask what was going on, but something was wrong with his mouth.

It was kind of hard to breathe.

Or move.

Or…

Dick closed his eyes again before he could find an answer to any of these questions.

He woke up again much later, everything fuzzy and soft and far away. He was laying on something comfortable…

There were voices all around him, but Dick didn’t know the people they belonged to. Or at least he didn’t recognize them. His stomach was grumbling, nausea threatening to spill up his throat, but it was all so far away… Dick didn’t have it in himself to wonder what exactly was going on.

He was warm and relatively comfortable. That would have to be enough.

He didn’t even manage to open his eyes, the pull of sleep too strong to keep him awake for long.

He let exhaustion carry him away, not very sad to see his awareness go.

“How is he doing?”

“The wounds are healing commendable. There is no longer any danger from infection and the nasal tube has been permanently secured – the Red Hood won’t ever open his mouth again after it finished healing.”

The voices pierced Dick’s fleeting awareness, senseless noise that barely registered to his tired brain. They were talking about him… but… he wasn’t the Red Hood, was he? No, Dick was Nightwing.

He had asked Uncle Clark himself.

Jason was the Red Hood. His brother.

Not Dick…

Maybe Jason was here with him? Wherever here was?

But no matter how hard Dick tried, he couldn’t open his eyes. He was just too tired to achieve such a feed. Too exhausted to breach the world just yet.

The last thing he heard before he drifted off, were once again the foreign voices:

“And what now?”

“Boss planned on taking him with us to Metropolis… using the Red Hood as an example to every asshole hero who thinks they can stop us.”

“Ah-“

His head was thrumming fiercely, when Dick managed to pry his eyes open. Near perfect darkness greeted him, the room he was in bathed in shadows. It took a couple of minutes until the world had settled around him, and once Dick could blink without the threat of vomit climbing up his trachea, he took stock of his surroundings.

The room was small, maybe ten on ten feet, and Dick was laying on the only piece of furniture besides a standard prison toilet. The cod underneath him was surprisingly soft, and the blanket was made out of wool. But even the quality of the things surrounding him, couldn’t distract from the fact that he was in a cell.

A dark cell.

His memories were a bit fuzzy, the past few days a confusing mess of waking and sleeping and pain, but Dick didn’t have to remember how exactly he had ended up in a cell – it was a bad enough sign that he was in one.

His raised his hand to check – yeah, he was still wearing a mask, even if his clothes had been changed. That was rather obvious – there was no known vigilante who fought crime dressed in sweatpants and a loose T-shirt.

His head felt kind of full, stuffed, as if Dick had only just taken pain killers, and now that Dick had his fingers pressed up against the mask, he could feel something else. There was something coming out of his nose.

The entire lower half of his face was numb, which was probably the reason why Dick hadn’t noticed it earlier.

His hand was shaking as it touched the small thingy and… Dick had had nasal tubes before, after truly horrid accidents and cases. He recognized the feel off one even if it didn’t seem to be connected to anything, the end taped onto Dick’s cheek.

Fuck.

A memory flashed through his mind. Some evil guy saying something… coming after Dick… no, coming after the Red Hood. And then… pain. So much pain. His face! His mouth!

It was standard protocol after waking up in an unfamiliar place, to be as silent as possible while investigating enemy territory. Dick had kept his mouth shut after waking up – deliriously spilling secrets because you couldn’t keep your mouth closed had to be the dumbest reason sensitive information could be revealed.

And now…

Dick tried to open his mouth. He tried to speak. He tried to scream. He tried to ask for help.

Nothing.

His mouth stayed shut, his lips didn’t budge, his jaw weirdly numb.

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck_.

Dick took a deep breath through his nose – **because he couldn’t breathe in through his mouth!** – and forced his hand to continue away from his nose, from the tube glued to his cheek, down towards his mouth.

He could feel his lips underneath his fingertips. They were dry – whoever had him probably didn’t bother with Chapstick – and full. They felt… normal. But Dick knew that this couldn’t be it.

His frantic heartbeat told him as much, the panic bubbling in his stomach told him as much, the fear crawling up his spine told him as much.

No, Dick forced his hands to continue their search, past his lips--- and that’s when he felt it. _Wire_. Dick didn’t have a mirror that would allow him to inspect his mouth up-close, and his imagination was influenced by the horror flowing through his veins, but Dick had a pretty good idea on what had happened.

At least to his lips.

Alfred Pennyworth, esteemed butler and grandfather of the Bat Bunch, had taught all of them how to sew. Dick knew how to hem and how to seam a piece of clothing, and he had the vague feeling – everything inside him numb, his heart a panicked mess, his head so full it felt swollen – that his lips had been French Seamed.

They looked normal from the outside, but the inside had been tightly sewn together. And… Dick couldn’t get his fingers past the seam, but from what he could tell, it had already healed. The wire had healed into his flesh, successfully sealing his mouth.

And his jaw?

That had to be something else – a flash of a piercing noise echoed through Dick’s mind, combined with another memory of pain.

A shudder ran down his spine.

It took ungodly amounts of concentration to focus on his tongue – and thank god, he could still feel it, as numb as it was – and use it to search his mouth for clues regarding his jaw. He couldn’t feel much, the piece of flesh swollen and affected by whatever narcotic was still present in his bloodstream, but he could feel the wire – and the way in which it was braided through his jaw.

_Through his jaw_.

The image of a bone drill would forever haunt him.

The nasal tube made sense, suddenly, as did the nausea.

Dick couldn’t eat. Couldn’t yell. Couldn’t drink.

He couldn’t even scream for help or beg for whoever had done this to him to reverse the horror forcing him silent. Tears sprung to his eyes, and Dick couldn’t stop them. He rolled himself into a ball, a futile attempt to appear smaller than he was, and sobbed.

It didn’t take long for his nose to start running, and suddenly another kind of panic started to seep into Dick’s bones. He couldn’t breathe… laying on his side, one nostril stuffed with the tube, the other one pressed into his bedding… he couldn’t breathe.

For a few pitiful moments Dick struggled to draw in air, his chest heaving, his mind lost to the survival instincts forcing him to panic even more. It felt almost like waterboarding – suffocating on dry land, snot running down his face.

It got better once he sat upright again, water freely flowing from his nose.

_Fuck_.

No…

Dick buried his head in his legs, drawing them close to his body. Someone had to safe him. Dick was pretty sure he wouldn’t get out of this one on his own.

Not with the wires keeping him silent, not with the tube being the thing that kept him alive. Not with no idea on where he was, nor a plan on what he could possibly achieve.

There were too many variables and Dick was one of them.

They came to give him food at some point.

There was a hook for the food bag on the wall over his bed, but Dick didn’t fight the goons when they entered his cell. He was honestly too tired to care.

At some point after waking up, before the men came, the pain killers in his system had stopped doing their job, leaving Dick with a fiercely hurting jaw, and an exhaustion that ran bone deep. Some time later, hunger and thirst had joined the list of aches, and by the time the door opposite his bed finally opened, Dick had just wanted it to stop.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been in the evil guys’ clutches, but according to the healing factor he usually portrayed and the fact that the wounds in his mouth barely felt like wounds anymore… it had been uncomfortably long.

Someone should be coming for him soon.

Someone should find him.

Someone _had_ to find him.

Why had nobody come for him yet?

His head was still messed up from the meds, and the pain, and the fact that **someone had wired his fucking jaw shut** , otherwise Dick wouldn’t think like that… but his heart cried in despair. He wanted someone to save him. He needed someone to save him.

Just this once.

Just today.

Jason or Bruce or Kory or Cass just had to break through the wall behind him and swoop him up and then… Dick would have forgotten about this in a month! Everything would be alright again… and yet, he had the vague feeling that nothing would be alright.

Maybe not ever.

He watched with dispassionate eyes as the goon connected the tube taped to his cheek to the bag full of pureed food. What if he let his thoughts wander? What if… What if Dick just stopped paying attention for a bit? It had to be better than his reality, right?

Everything was better than a dark cell, and a stomach that cramped because processed food was being pushed inside. Everything was better than a numb tongue, and an aching throat. Everything was better than… than a wired shut jaw.

It was so humiliating to be unable to eat. It was… Dick had never known how much of his agency hinged on the smallest of things. Eating, drinking… _talking_. And this fucking bastard – Dr. Evil! That has been his name! – had taken it from Dick. _For what_?

Biting him? Being funny? Being in his way?

Tears were collecting in his eyes, but Dick denied himself the pleasure of crying. Not again. Not in front of the men working for the asshole who had done this to him.

(it had nothing to do with the fact that Dick was afraid of accidentally drowning himself again, the feeling of suffocation still haunting him – always haunting him)

Maybe he could just… meditate. Bruce had taught him how to meditate through pain, and Dick had found his own ways to turn off his thoughts without falling into downright dissociation. In the long run, Dick might have to take the dark path his declining mental health offered – but right now he could still count and get lost in the numbers.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55,…

It became sort of a routine.

Dick’s only measurement of time were the bags full of food and water he was brought, but he got used to that… and after a few days he even stopped silently screaming every time he woke up from a nightmare.

It hurt his lips and jaw when he tried to move them too much, even if it never seemed to weaken the seams keeping them closed. He couldn’t really scream anyway, the sounds that escaped him weak and pitiful and not recognizably human. Dick got… kind of used to not using his mouth.

He hadn’t been here – wherever here was – long enough to really feel the psychological effects of losing the ability to eat normally, but he could feel tendrils of it touch his mind.

His jaw was immobile, and since it hurt when Dick tried to prove himself otherwise, he eventually stopped trying… chewing and tasting things felt like a distant memory, and while his throat was painfully, painfully dry, it was hard to conjure up the feeling of water flowing down his trachea.

It scared him. _Horribly so_.

And what scared him even more was the fact that nobody had come for him yet.

(where was his family? Where were they?)

Dick didn’t try to let that stop him, of course. After he had spent the first two days crying and sobbing and dissociating and suffocating…. He had done the healthiest thing he could do in the moment: He pushed all his emotions down and locked them in a cage hidden in his heart.

He had learned that trick from Bruce, and it had saved his life once or twice in the past.

So, Dick was working on his own escape plan. It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t come particularly far.

His cell gave him little to work with. The light was permanently turned down, and the walls were bare. He had a bed, with a blanket and a pillow, a toilet, toilet paper, and a sink for washing hands. There was also the hook for his food bags, but Dick had tried prying it from the wall without success.

Which left him with…

The door.

The locked door, that only opened twice a day, to allow two guards to enter.

Usually that would be nothing. Nightwing could fight against ten opponents at once and win, but the time spent unconscious together with his time spent inside a small room without any kind of workout… Let’s just say Nightwing had seen better days.

And that ignored the lack of intel Dick suffered.

He had no idea where he was. Or what the base they kept him in looked like, and how many people were stationed here at any given point.

Dick had run rescue operations on less, but right now… each moment he allowed himself to think, doubt and pain and panic built up. He wasn’t at his best – if he was being honest, he was so far from his best, it didn’t even matter that the guys who had him thought he was Jason.

One good hit would incapacitate him, and he couldn’t even scream for help. His lung capacity was seriously hindered by the sewn shut mouth, and he felt like suffocating half the time when he was laying on his back.

Dick was scared. Shitless.

But if he thought about how scared he was, he would also have to think about the things that had been done to him… he would be forced to deal with the mutilation and the pain and the humiliation. He would have to deal with the lack of agency, the fear, the panic… he would be… he would be…

His breath came in short bursts, and Dick sank down onto his knees to collect his bearings.

He had to lock his emotions away. He had to keep the pain under lock and key. He had to… the panic wasn’t allowed to escape. It would run havoc through his body. It would destroy his mind and turn him into this sobbing mess he had been when he first woke up in his cell.

Nightwing was better than this.

Nightwing would escape this situation, even if everyone thought he was the Red Hood. Nightwing would escape this mess, even if his life was falling apart and his body was no longer truly his.

It was approximately day twenty when Dick started to really, really worry.

He had only ever seen the goons the entire time he could remember being in Dr. Evil’s clutches – _after the restrains, and the drill, and the pain, and the fear_ – and that unsettled him.

What was his plan? What was going on? What was the grand scheme?

There was always a grand plan – and usually it didn’t take this long for it to be set in motion. 

The other thing that worried him… Dick was no doctor, but he knew field medicine, and he knew what happened to muscles that didn’t get used. He could feel the atrophy in his jaw. It was… unsettling, horrifying _, tragic_.

Whenever he tried to move his mouth… the response was weaker than it had been in the beginning. The muscles in his jaw were barely tightening, the pull on the wire running through his bone almost imperceptible. His tongue moved only sluggishly, and most of that was to help him swallow around the feeding tube running from his nose to his stomach.

His jaw didn’t ache anymore.

Dick had only distantly thought about forcefully ripping his mouth open, before his common sense had kicked back in… but the thought had been there.

And with each day the passive panic grew, his heart growing heavier, and his resolve less strong.

Something had to happen. No plan offered itself to him… but Dick was willing to do the dumb thing if only it meant something was going to happen.

Maybe blindly charging an underground base was the only thing he could do. Maybe Dick had to risk death, in order to gain his life back.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

(because in the past his family had failed to save him as well, no matter how often Dick tried to deny just that)

He was sitting on his bed, waiting for some food to fill his growling stomach, when the door opened, and the guards entered the room. He didn’t look at them – most of them didn’t even talk to him. Apparently, Dick was of no interest since he couldn’t talk. Made them think he was deaf as well.

His eyes followed their movements without him raising his head.

He knew those two guards. They were the guys that came by most often – and they liked to talk. Dick did his best to listen whenever possible. Usually, they talked about their wives, or kids, or the tax plan they had submitted…

_Usually._

Today, as Dick sat there fiddling with his thumbs, waiting for the perfect moment to present itself… they were talking about something else. Someone else. _Him_. They were talking about him.

“And remind me again, how long we’re going to have to play nursemaids for this fucking vigilante?”

“ _God,_ Gregory… you know the plan. The boss told Superman what would happen to the Big Bad Hood” – and Dick hated the way it grated on his ego when they laughed – “shouldn’t he comply. This place is lined with lead, Supes can’t find it… and Metropolis can be our main city come tomorrow.”

Pieces fitted together in Dick’s mind.

Their location – his location. The rough plan Dr. Evil was following and… a timeframe. **Tomorrow**.

Dick had thought he would have enough time to wait for the perfect moment, for the element of surprise, for that one chance that would at least give him some sort of upper hand…

But it seemed as if his hand was being forced.

His moment had just presented itself without any proper warning – and Dick was going to take it.

He straightened up, the two goons falling silent, when they noticed his movement.

They had never seemed scared by him before, Dick a pitiful creature those past few weeks. But he was a Bat, and a Bat who made a decision could be a nightmarish force. It was determination, after all, that had pushed Bruce as far as it did – and it had been pure stubbornness that had made Dick survive into adulthood.

When they looked at him now, there was something calculating in their gaze. Something that told him they had noticed his change in posture – almost drawing the correct conclusions before Dick could act.

The bag hanging on the wall was empty.

Now or never.

Dick had almost forgotten how fast he could be, when he grabbed the bag and tore it from the hook. Before the guards could react – their eyes wide and their mouths open – Dick used the tube to loop it around Gregory’s neck, pulling the both of them onto the ground.

Normally, if he could speak, Dick would make a quippy remark right about now. Maybe something along the line of “Oh, look what I caught now” or “I usually don’t like gallows humor – but I’ll make an exception for you, because you are a joke”… as it was, he stared grimly in the eyes of the guard, until they fell closed from a lack of oxygen.

For a moment Dick continued to look at the closed eyes and the lack of breathing, not reacting, even though Gregory was in danger of actually dying. For a moment Dick played with the thought of killing the guy… after all the pain he suffered, after all the hurt and degradation… after the fucking mutilation done to him… wasn’t it only fair if the men working for Dr. Evil got their comeuppance?

If they suffered just as he had suffered? **For weeks**?

He had been alone and forgotten… Dick was breaking, had done so for weeks…. Would it really be that bad should he break Bruce’s rule now?

“Hey! Stop!”

Dick didn’t have to make that choice – the other guard made it for him by interrupting him.

It was all blind reflex that made him move, Dick jumping forward and pulling the guard down with him, this time with his arm hooked around his neck. It wasn’t a fighting style Dick would usually choose. There were no kicks or flips – just aggression and pent up frustration.

He wasn’t fighting for some holy reason – he was fighting to survive. And survival had always been ugly – dirty hands, and ash streaked cheeks, callus and tense muscles… that’s what survival looked like. Dick had grown up surrounded by survivors, had been molded into one as well…

Soon enough both men were unconscious, and Dick was still standing, still alive.

It had been easy, maybe too easy, but Dick no longer cared.

He wanted to get out of here.

He wanted to see the sun rise above the sky, and the moon bath him in silver. He wanted to cry, and he wanted someone to hold him as he fell apart. He wanted his dad to fix this mess, and he wanted Jason to be okay, and Damian to be alright.

He wanted… to be a person again. Conversation. Light. Companionship.

He wanted to return to the world.

Dick’s heart was so full of want – and his mind so weighted down by trauma – he would do almost anything to achieve just that.

At this point---- Dick was no longer going to let anyone stop him.

He had fought the guards… and if they tried to catch him again? Dick would fight them as well. And he would win. Or he would die…

But he wouldn’t enter that damned cell again. He wouldn’t wait for whatever Dr. Evil had planned for him, or if Superman was truly involved.

Dick was sick of waiting.

Nobody had come for him.

Well, maybe Dick would come for them.

He stepped out of the room and into the hallway.

The door fell closed behind him and suddenly it was just him. Dick Grayson, silent, beat, tortured and traumatized. Dick Grayson and a choice between right and left. Right and wrong.

He chose the road less traveled – he walked down the right hallway.

He could only hope sunlight would greet him at the end of it. Even if it was colored red.

Even if Dick had to fight for it.

**Author's Note:**

> **Comments, Bookmarks and Kudos make my heart beat faster! <3<3<3**


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